I have been on Sabbatical since May, as it were. The time passes quickly. And as I complete one last road trip, I thought I might return to these pages with the usual market analysis and a touch of wisdom. Writing is a lot of work, but I have missed it. It is cathartic in some way.
Since wisdom is in shorter supply these days than opinions about the financial markets, let’s welcome my return to these pages with some thoughts from Kunstler. Sometimes, you run into someone who can express your thoughts better than you. Rush Limbaugh was the first person I encountered who did this for me in the late 1990s. I still miss him. But Kunstler will give anyone a run for their money. He has the gift of gab to go along with his wisdom. Here goes it on his latest musings. It is exactly what I am thinking about our current situation – encapsulated:
“The sun is low on the horizon all day long now, and darkness creeps in like a home invasion of your mind. Demons descend through a red and black sky and no help is on the way. Our country is so mentally hog-tied trying to unravel the twisted events of just a few years past that it has no mojo left for rationally anticipating the events of just a few years ahead. Have you ever felt more alone?
This is the end-process that we’ve been softened up for: the inability to think and plan. The gigantic “intel community” evolved from something intended to act as sensitized antennae for detecting threats against our republic into what is now a remorseless mind-fucking operation against our republic. That word, by the way, derives from the Latin res publica: the public thing, a society that literally belongs to the people, who decide its affairs. Now, so much is mysteriously decided for us, and not in any good way.
It’s no wonder more than half the country can’t think straight, and it’s a whopping irony that this group comprises most of our country’s thinking class —the bureaucratic managers, the professors, the curators, the editors, the reporters lost in mis-reporting. This group used to play a critical role in the res publica: to earnestly determine what is true and what is real, and to present us with a way of understanding all that so we can think and plan. They appear to be captured by malign forces. The scribes are hard at work defending every act of official malice. The dishonesty at work is epic. You need a decoder ring to keep your mind right.
You are probably desperate to understand why this is happening — how, for instance, a blatantly corrupt and ignorant attorney general in New York state can get away with bringing a politically-motivated nonsense case against the leading presidential candidate in a courtroom ruled by a judge who acts like a jester in a Shakespeare play. New York AG Letitia James gets away with it because the flagship organ of the thinking class, The New York Times, is in on the gambit. But why?
We struggle to sort this out. One explanation is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has infiltrated the management of our country at every level so as to eventually conquer our territory for its resources while eliminating or enslaving the population. Surely, the CCP has made significant inroads, starting with the successful bribery and compromise of “Joe Biden,” probably other elected officials, too, in placing many CCP agents in the vast array of university research departments, NGOs, PACs, and lobbying gangs, and extending to the purchase of vital businesses and farmland to prepare the gameboard for eventual takeover. My opinion is they’ve accomplished a good bit of this, but it’s not the answer you’re seeking.
Another popular idea out there is that a sinister cartel or cabal composed of the World Economic Forum, the WHO, the EU, and a claque of super-rich megalomaniacs (e.g., Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg) trying to usher in the so-called “transhumanist” next chapter of human history. This scheme is so full of preposterous contradictions that it remains hard to take seriously. The main one is that their engineered collapse of techno-industrial civilization would destroy the very network of complex systems that might support their supposed cyborg nirvana, especially a reliable electric grid. Secondarily, collapse would result not in centralizing power but just the opposite, re-localizing power away from the center, negating the possibility of global rule.
A third theory is that the USA has somehow gone “communist.” The universities have, for sure, but in a most half-assed way imaginable that presents more as a case of collective mental illness than a true political ideology. Higher education has lately enjoyed stupendous subsidies and revenues that funnel down to the miserable cat-ladies who have taken over the faculty department chairs, plus the deans and president’s offices. The Niagara of grants and lavish salaries has funded the dissemination of incoherent cat-lady ideas, such as the foundational notion that all men are hopelessly defective except the ones who pretend to be women or vice-versa. Such postulations lead to ridiculous actions like the drag queen story hour, or men competing in women’s swim competitions. These actions-and-effects are “communistic” only insofar as they induce some Marxist-Gramscian overthrow of normality (i.e., a coherent cultural consensus) in order to usher in the utopia of perfect social equity, where nobody is allowed to do better than anybody else — that is, a society of cat-ladies (plus men pretending to be cat-ladies), all equally miserable.
Are the editors and reporters of The New York Times all bought off by the CCP, Soros, Gates? I doubt it. That’s not what’s going on here. And the same goes for the Intel Community, much of the rest of the executive branch of the US government, the various “blue” state and blue city governments, and the great social media companies. Are all the employees of these vast bureaucracies dedicated communists? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….
What’s going on is that all these players are now desperate to evade the blame for and consequences of their many crimes. Hundreds of top bureaucrats and elected officials will be liable for prosecution for monstrous acts of perfidy and treason against our republic and its citizens. The New York Times and other compliant news outlets that lied about everything from Russian collusion to election fraud to the safety of Covid-19 vaccines to protect their fumbling allies in power are desperate to save their reputations — though that will be impossible as the truth eventually unfolds, and it will. Their knowing lies did real and lasting harm to the public thing.
Take heart in these darkening days. The light will not be extinguished. It will return, as everything does in this universe of endless cycles. A nation turned upside down will find its feet again. The wicked will answer. The counter-revolution has begun. You are not alone.
Kunstler (Kunstler.com)
Remember when I told you about the “Fourth Turning” only a few short years ago? Even knowing it was coming and fully preparing for it, I still underestimated what it would be like to live through it. How do you like it so far?
Then there was that 80-year War Cycle thing. Do you believe me now?
The good news is that all cycles have an implicit end. Cycle trough to cycle trough. And there will be an end to this series of cycles, too. And more likely, due to the wisdom of non-Western leaders worldwide, we hope to make it with our cajones intact.
I am back, though I cannot promise daily musings…
A.F. Thornton
P.S. Next up, my latest stock market Magnum Opus